Have just found out that the veg is half priced at Lidl. Have never tried pickling before so it's time to experiment without a big hole in the pocket if it all goes pear-shaped!

With a three course meal on the first day of Christmas - and with us all on best behaviour as guests - I thought that an informal buffet would be the best thing for the second day of Christmas. I had hoped that we could relax as a family and chat. It seemed sensible to go for completely different tastes to the day before.

Menu

Roast carrot, garlic and yogurt dip (a recipe my wife found from an Ainsley Harriott article)
Pitta bread with herb butter (used chives and parsley)
Toulouse sausage rolled in black forest ham
Chipolata sausage rolled in bacon
Courgette pakora and dip
Baby peppers stuffed with black and white pudding
(Smoked salmon pancakes)

Left to right: pitta bread with herb butter, smoked salmon pancakes, courgette pakora, sausages, stuffed peppers & carrot dip.

We decided to sit round the table after all and the meal was a mixed success. We realised very quickly that the smoked salmon pancakes had a subtle taste that did not go with robust flavours like garlic/carrots, black pudding, pakoras and chilli dips; pancakes quickly returned to the fridge for another day! Shortly after starting one son got into an argument and went in a huff, ditto for his eldest brother a little later....oh well, so much for family meals.... conversation for the rest of the meal less than lively

A few years ago when on holiday in Spain I picked up a book of tapa recipes. Some involve a bit of work but some are incredibly simple. One idea I liked was to stuff small peppers with morcilla (Spanish black pudding) and to bake in the oven. It tried with with Scots black pudding and it worked out well. We also like white pudding so I tried using both yesterday.

Ingredients

10 baby peppers
1 small black pudding
1 small white pudding

Method

1. Preheat the oven to about 180 Celsius
2. Cut off the tops of the pepper and remove the seeds from inside.
3. Stuff half of the peppers with black pudding
4. Stuff the other half of the peppers with white pudding
5. Put on a baking tray and bake for up to 20 minutes.
6. Serve with a spicy ketchup.

We got this recipe from our friend Claudia while in Munich. It has proved a useful one for buffets like our one today.

Ingredients

200 g smoked salmon
2 eggs
150 g plain flour
200 ml milk
salt & pepper
100 g cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)
1 tsp horseradish
small handful fresh chives (OK these have almost died down for the winter but found just enough in the herb garden)
vegtable oil

Method

1. Whisk together the eggs, flour and milk (use your own favourite pancake recipe instead if you wish). Chop the
 chives and add to the batter.
2. Heat about a teaspoonful of vegetable oil in a nonstick frying pan (roughly 25 cm diameter).
3. Add the pancake mixture to the centre of the pan then spread the mixture out until the whole of the bottom of the pan is covered with a thin layer of batter.
4. When the mixture has set flip the pancake.
5. Remove when the other side is cooked
6. Repeat 2-5 until the mixture is used up. Let the pancakes cool.
7. Mix the cream cheese and horseradish.
8. Spread the chees/horseradish mix and salmon over the pancakes.

Since we were guests I will keep this simple:

Starter

Cherry tomatoes with basil and horseradish/yogurt/mayonaise sauce

Main course

Roast beef with Organo's gravy

or

Chestnut and mushroom pie with port sauce

and

Roast potatoes
Roast parsnip
Carrots with parsley
Brussels sprouts with finely chopped garlic

Dessert

Christmas pudding

or

Lemon cream dessert

View

Canary Wharf London

A few years ago we had a house full for Christmas. Our boys are not too keen on roast turkey so we decided to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple and Stupid). Since our guests were from overseas and did not visit us often we thought it would be sensible to keep cooking to a minimum. We therefore decided to go for roast salmon, roast potatoes, roast parsnips and other vegetables. This would all cook within an hour; so not longer than the roast potatoes.

It was a success as we enjoyed it and had plenty of time to socialise with our guests. So we have had a few Christmas salmons in recent years.

We quite often can get a whole salmon at a reasonable price. Usually it is 4.0-4.5 kg and we usually get it filleted at the fish counter - the head, tail and bones take about 40% of the weight. If we have had a lot of people we have roasted the two sides with lemon and herbs between the sides. The roast takes about 20 minutes per kilo at 190 Celsius, but we always check that the thickest part of the salmon is roasted through; the side of salmon varies a lot in thickness so the head end takes longer to cook through.

For a family meal (see above) we might do a single side.

Serves 5

750 g side of salmon (if we buy a whole salmon we will get through it in approx 3 portions)
2 medium onions
1 whole lemon
sea salt
pepper
rosemary or other herbs (optional)
honey (optional)

Method

1. Slice the onion into slices of about 3 mm. Lay them in a tray or baking dish.
2. Lay the salmon side skin downwards on the onion slices
3. Rub sea salt into the salmon flesh, sprinkle a litle pepper, add herbs if required
4. Slice lemon into slices of about 3 mm. Lay them on the salmon flesh
5. Cover with foil and put into a pre-heated oven at 190 Celsius
6. After 30 minutes check the thickest part of the salmon to see if it is cooked
7. Remove foil and spread a little honey on the surface and return to oven for 5 minutes.

I like rosemary but we usually drop it as my boys don't like it. Dill also goes well.

A variation we have tried is to put mustard seed and honey on the salmon before it goes into the oven at 220 Celsius. The taste is good but it is a lot of work to clean the baking tray as the honey runs off and burns onto the tray.

Whatever your favourite Christmas food, Happy Christmas to all in Blogland!

It's almost Christmas and doubtless most families across the country will be planning a 'traditional' Christmas roast turkey a week today. Over the last day or so a few memories of Christmas turkeys have crossed my mind.

One thing I keep thinking of is that roasting a turkey is one time in the year when men who almost never cook get busy in the kitchen. The other obvious occasion is the summer barbeque when turning the meat to charcoal becomes a manly task. In my family though it was also the summer camping holiday. My dad - who has hardly ever cooked - used to take over the cooking in our tent. He trusted my Mum implicitly in the kitchen at home but as soon as we were under canvas, he seemed terrified that she would burn the tent down with our camping gas stove. Of course most people do not normally lug a 5 kilo bird into and out of the oven so it is not surprising that my Dad got involved with the Christmas turkey.

From what I recall of family Christmases around 1970 it was a time when my Mum's sense of hygeine and domesticity was thrown out of the window. The first thing was the thawing. I recall a number of years when the thawing turkey took over the bath for a day or two. When I think back that was not very hygeinic - but on the other hand the safe defrosting over many days in a fridge would never have worked as our fridge was tiny. Defrosting in a fridge requires up front planning - you are talking of about 70-90 hours so 3-4 days for a large bird.

My parents were always concerned to 'clean' the turkey in the kitchen sink. Of course the exercise would have spattered the sink area with bacteria-laden droplets; not a good idea. They seemed to forget that heat rather than washing would kill the bacteria. Most are dead at 60 Celsius which is well below the roughly 180 Celsius you would use to roast a turkey.

In case I appear to be hypocritical telling stories about my family, I admit we are blessed with better facilities than our parents were 35 years ago!

More recently I have been fascinated at the way our weights and measures have been muddled in the early noughties. Britain has been adopting metric forever (but at a tortoise's pace) and it was only in 2000 that most foods had to be weighed in kilos. So in the nineties it was natural that many roasting guides gave rules of thumb in 'minutes per pound'. To me it was obvious that from 2000 onwards it would make sense to change to 'minutes per kilogram' with meat and poultry labeled in kilos. However - probably a result of the government changing the measures by stealth - most food suppliers and supermarkets updated their guidelines in a very amateurish way.

Many web roasting guides offered turkey roasting times in 'minutes per 454 grams'. Er... if you have a 5 kg bird you need a calculator to work that out! Even Nigella Lawson and other writers offered 'minutes per 500 grams'. Some birds were labelled with tables that were based on round numbers of pounds expressed in grams - what a mess!

Today I thought I would do a quick Google search to see if today's roasting advice on the web is more user-friendly in 2006. The first five hits from Google are given below:

i) iVillage has quite a nice guide over 3 web pages. There is a useful thawing guide based on sensible round kilogram weights that you will find in your supermarket. There is a similarly sensible roasting table though I am forever surprised to see fahrenheit termperatures.
ii) Good old Delia Smith has an extensively illustrated guide showing how to use bacon rashers with a roast turkey. However her measures seem firmly back in the 1970s. She works in ounces and Fahrenheit temperatures which is not much use when meat is weighed in kilograms or grams and ovens are in Celsius. Come to think of it I bought my first oven in John Lewis back in 1985 - even then I recall seeing just one Fahrenheit oven in a big showroom and concluded it was obsolescent. Surely with Delia's royalties not to speak of Norwich City FC she has bought a new oven in the last decade or so...or she's just stuck in the past.
iii) The BBC seem even more keen to sit on the fence with measurement units than the government. Their units are given in duplicate or triplicate for example 'turkey, 5kg/11¼lb in weight' and give an awkward rule of thumb '180C/350F/Gas 4 for 20 minutes per 500g/1lb'. Is the BBC scared of offending the old Prussian scientist; Daniel Fahrenheit? Wasn't education part of the BBC Charter? The tip of skewering the thigh to see if the juices are clear though is a good one.
iv) The UK Metric Association gives the simple rule of thumb of roasting 40 minutes per kilo of turkey. They also warn about weighing turkeys on bathroom scales - which is probably what you need to do if using a pound-based thawing or roasting rule - and provide some useful tips.
v) The Food Standards Agency provide quite a thorough description on safe turkey preparation. They provide a kilo-based rule of thumb for defrosting - very useful if your turkey is going to be oven-ready on Christmas day as opposed to a few days late. However they are touchingly nostalgic by providing Fahrenheit fridge temperatures. I have honestly never seen a fahrenheit fridge indicator outside of the USA. Surely everybody thinks that the freezing point is zero? Muddling Celsius and Fahrenheit is dangerous; 39 Fahrenheit is fridge temperature but 39 Celsius would be summer in Malaga! They also have a kilo-based rule of thumb for roasting.

So maybe a bit of progress in modernising our measures - though there are some websites are still caught in the past or are wanting to accomodate museum-piece kitchen appliances.

So I have been rambling on a lot. My turkey roasting tips are:
a) Plan ahead especially with defrosting,
b) Avoid unhygeinic things you would not normally do like defrosting in a bath or washing out a large bird
c) Don't muddle or mix your pounds and kilos. If you muddle your units you might end up with a seriously undercooked bird and foodpoisoning. Since turkeys are weighed in kilograms use a kilo-based rule of thumb e.g. 10-12 hours/kg in a fridge for defrosting and 40 min/kg at 180 Celsius for roasting.

But I will not be roasting a turkey this year. I had turkey at my company bash last week but will spend Christmas with relatives with a veggie menu with roast beef alternative menu.

I had thought about writing a few product reviews for kitchen gear I have liked or disliked.

Last year about this time my wife noticed that Wilkinson was offering a very cheap turkey roasting tin (38.5 by 31.5 cm). We needed to replace our old worn out tin so gave it a try. My wife said it was so cheap that it would be more cost effective than just buying throwaway foil tins.

Well, despite lacking fancy features like anodised or non-stick surfaces it has done very well over the last year. We have used it for roasts (though not turkeys) and for lasagne when expecting a big crowd. We had no real problems with sticking.

It is available again this year for the princely sum of 60 pence! Not bad when a similar sized pan would cost >£30 at say John Lewis; admitedly the latter would probably look more sophisticated and last longer. But even if it lasted only a year or two it is good value for money.

Well, I've just got back from Munich.

Last night I had hoped to visit the Christkindlmarkt. There are lovely (in my view) tasteful Christmas decorations for sale made from natural materials like straw and wood. There are stalls selling sugared almonds - wonderful smell. Others selling sausages (real sausages not fat, machine recovered meat and breadcrumbs in casings). Last but not least there is Glühwein or grog which is perfect for frost weather.

Alas, Oregano missed it all. His customer worked overtime to complete the long discussion...och well!! I have to earn a living.

However I managed to visit my mate Evangelos' Greek restaurant close to our office in Riem. I have never been to Greece so do not know how authentic it is, but there are plenty of Greek restaurants in Germany. I like the cooking at Evangelos' place and went for bifteki, with tzatziki and rice. It was nicely washed down with dunkles Weißbier which I know is not Greek but complemented the dish nicely. At home I have tried to do an approximation to Evangelos' bifteki and after a few more tries will blog the recipe.

So - to my amazement - I had a business class seat again with BA so I should report on the grub on flight BA955. This time there was a salad with some sort of salmon mousse. It was more appetizing than the prawns on the way out but smoked salmon would have been better. The salad of fricassée, potatoes and grilled courgettes was a lot better than on the way out. The cheesecake with real lemon zest was not bad at all. So a better experience on the return trip....but still no salad dressing!!!

I was pleased when Flatlander shared a comment on his experience of Christmas in Finland.

Have I been too hard on what we do in the UK? Do you have any traditions from you country or region you would like to share?

Please share....

Organo

Friends in blogland,

You will probably have twigged that I am not very professional at writing food reviews. It just occured to me a few weeks ago that since I travel a fair bit on business I ought to report on my dining experiences. I have - after all - picked up ideas when travelling that have provided - unfaithfully reproduced - results at home. OK, so I need to sort out the ratings to be more systematic but I will not get to it today.

I manage a pan-European team so travel frequently; usually by air. Not surprisingly my company needs to manage its expenses so always tries to find the cheapest way to transport Oregano to his appointments. Before the telecom bubble burst, I was booked on flights that gave me Gold cards with both BA & Lufthansa. In recent years I am flying many miles/kilometres but hardly scoring any points with the frequent flyer programmes (don't bother shedding crocodile tears for me, this is business!) because I am usually booked on the lowest price tier.

Tonight I was amazed that (contrary to company policy) I was booked on business class with BA to Munich; the cheaper seats were obviously sold out. After a few years of grotty economy class sandwiches (from different airlines) I was actually looking forward to the flight. Well, we were warned that we would be about 30 min late; I have a friend at church who is a BA pilot and understand that this can happen for good reasons so do not want to criticise. Well we boarded 30 min late and took off 60 min late.

So what about the grub? Better than the random sandwich in economy? I'm not so sure. I got a salad with sort of OK fricasée, 3 dubious tomato slices, even more dubious mushroom slices and 3 prawns. OK, this is intended to be almost like a starter, if you arrive at a decent time at a European destination you will want to go out to eat rather than rely on BA as your main meal of the day! However the dressing, real or imagined, was interesting. The last time I flew BA business class - 18 months ago - I got nice tiny corked bottles with dressing - but nothing like that today.

For the last two or more decades friends from our European neighbours or the USA have often said that they cannot understand why in they UK they get salads with good leaf quality but with no dressing. While that was the norm in my family too decades ago, as soon as I had tried I few dressings abroad I understood why they were saying that.

OK, so 3 prawns is not a real meal but a snack...but why did our salad have no dressing? A fellow British passenger complained and told the stewardess that there was no dressing. She (loyally - maybe she gets a Christmas bonus for this) said that there was no separate bottle because the salad was 'already dressed'. If it was dressed it was a mere vapour! After that and supercooled red wine I could not be bothered trying the chocolate cake desert.

I do not know if this was a forgiveable, silly screwup. But the extra Business Class fare was certainly not value for money. What is a little bit of olive oil with say a little less basalmic vinegar? It would hardly bust the airline's budget and would improve a very unambitious meal!

Christmas for most people these days has nothing to do with remembering the birth of Jesus (which by the way is important to me!), but is the biggest celebration of materialism and indulgence in the year. The idea of feasting may seem odd when the western world is largely blessed with plentiful food and drink but that obviously was not the case in the past.

It is easy to forget that widespread refridgeration is in historic terms fairly new. Before the middle of the twentieth century it was necessary to preserve food harvested in summer to survive the winter. Most families were familiar with using drying or preserving fruit, vegetables and fish with sugar, vinegar and salt. Christmas was the one feast in a fairly grim part of the year.

It is interesting to see common ingredients in a lot of winter and Christmas food across Europe. For example, dried fruit is used in Christmas pudding or mince pies in the UK and Christstollen in Germany. Cinnamon and cloves are used in Glühwein in German speaking countries and spekulaas in the Netherlands. Marzipan is used in British Christmas cake, wrapped in pastry in the Netherlands and covered in chocolate in Germany.

A few years ago around this time of year I compared notes on the main Christmas dishes with colleagues in my team. It was interesting that in the German-speaking and Nordic countries the big event was on the evening of the 24th while in France, Italy and the UK the 25th was the big family celebration. Nordic countries have buffets with smoked salmon, pickled hering and hams. In N. Italy and Saxony fish was the main Chirstmas dish. I understand that capon is not uncommon in France and Italy. Goose is traditional in a lot of Germany.

This all brings me back to the traditional British Christmas. If you speak to people these days you have the impression that a Christmas turkey has been a tradition for centuries. In fact many families seem so tradition-bound that they roast enormous turkeys blissfully ignoring the fact that they do not really like eating dry cold turkey for days after Christmas. Of course, the Christmas turkey is about as traditional in the UK as a quarter pounder or a deep-pan pizza.

I recall that in the 1960s you could order a frozen turkey from the milkman (milk was delivered to the doorstep in those days!). My parents got a form every Christmas to order extra milk, a Christmas bird, cream and some other goodies. But the bird on offer was not just turkey but you could get capon (haven't seen that for sale for years!) or chicken and presumably quite a few people did not just buy turkey. In the mid 1970s I recall a TV programme where they interviewed elderly men in a Dorset pub and asked what the main Christmas dish was in their childhood. Almost all said that the tradition was "goose if you could afford it" but most families had smaller budgets and would just get a bigger joint of meat than normal like beef or pork. So maybe the Christmas turkey "tradition" only goes back to between the wars.

Anyway I just wish people in the UK were less tradition-bound and just order what they will enjoy and can prepare simply.

Bah humbug!

When I have been on holiday in Italy I have been impressed by the number of family businesses that are still active in small towns and villages. Meanwhile in the UK things like family fishmongers, butchers, bakers and greengrocers are endangered species. In my town we have four large supermarkets (with a fifth on the way), have no fishmonger, the last butchers have gone out of business and we have one baker and greengrocer left - both of which are still thriving.

In Italy there is also less of a presence of the big fast food multinationals e.g. Burger King, KFC, etc. Sadly in Britain we have not embraced food in the past directly from European neighbours (e.g. pizza, german sausages, cappucino, etc) but have gobbled it up when a naffer version is marketed by US-based multi-nationals (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Starbucks). We did not learn to eat the crisp fine Italian pizza but a soggy deep pan US version. We waited until Starbucks offered "Italian coffee" (I am glad they get decent competetion from Caffe Nero, etc); we Brits must be mugs!

It is not surprising that the Italians revolted against the growing presence of fast food and started the Slow Food movement in 1986. They have aimed to support diverse, sustainable, local food and to resist the growing homogenisation of food. They therefore support some traditional food production that it is at risk of dying out. From what I have read they do not seem to be caught in a time warp either.

Some interesting facts taken from their main website.
- 75% of European food product diversity has been lost since 1900
- 93% of American food product diversity has been lost in the same time period
- 33% of livestock varieties have disappeared or are near disappearing
- 30,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct in the last century.

Of couse, while I have no doubt that a large number of traditional British products have disappeared (from a smaller base of regional dishes than say France or Italy), we have had our taste repetoire enriched from India, Thailand, Spain, etc.

On Monday the UK Slow Food HQ was opened in Ludlow Shropshire. Ongoing projects exist around Somerset cheeses, cheese and beef from Old Gloucester cattle, perry and Cornish pilchards.

While I do not see myself joining up (too specialised for me) I am glad some people are doing this and going in the opposite direction of big multinational business. I'm afraid I will still need my fast "real food" from good fresh ingredients for some of the time but we will all benefit if Slow Food is successful. 

Last week, around the time that the Soil Association published their survey of family restaurants I heard the following on a Radio 4 comedy programme:

"What is junk food?"

"Food that is high in salt, sugar and fat eaten by working class people."

"What is convenience food?"

"Food that is high in salt, sugar and fat eaten by middle class people."

Perhaps only half a joke given the quality of Marks and Spencer ready meals and some of the posher family restaurants.

I have always been suspicious of going on diets. There are all sorts of diets that have been proposed and some of them seem a bit wacky. For example,
- the Atkins diet "lose weight by eating in a way that is not good for your kidneys"
- the Beverly Hills diet "lose weight by eating only fruit for 10 days and spending hours on the loo"
- the Cambridge diet "lose weight by eating powder mixed with water".

Most people I know who have done diets lose weight for a while then put it on again after they return to their normal lifestyle. Exceptionally some might want to look like Victoria Beckham and stick to it. Most diets are not sustainable if they involve an extreme way of eating. Common sense suggests that adopting a healthy life with good fresh food and adequate exercise. My weight problems are clearly a combination of a sedentary job, erratic or insufficent exercise and being too fond of some foods and wines.

On the plane to Lyon I picked up a free copy of the Daily Telegraph and was drawn to the article on the Wine Diet. Of course, I am disappointed to report, it does not mean unlimited red wine compensating for indulgence in nice southern European dishes. It was written by Prof Roger Corder, a cardiovascular expert, who researched the longevity of people in Sardinia and concluded that the right alcohol as well as the good nutrition were key to their health.

He has published a book and extracts have been in the Daily Telegraph this week.

Day 1: (read on the plane to Lyon) goes into why red wine is healthy. He describes flavonoids - I now understand Gilraen's post - but stresses procyanidins.
Day 2: (read on the way back) goes into the benefits of (plain) chocolate, fruit, nuts and cinnamon.
Day 3: focuses on the benefits of the Cretan diet, when you should eat and the importance of sleep
Day 4: dismisses common myths about low-calorie diets, fibre and obsessive water drinking
Day 5: stresses exercise, home cooking and gives a menu plan.

I found the extracts highly readable and common sense. I have no doubt that Prof Corder will sell well just because of the title but maybe (and I have not read the whole book!) it is a worthwhile diet book for a change.

Cheers!

 

There has been a lot of media interest in the question of children's diet and the resulting effect on health. The British Medical Association in a report (Preventing childhood obesity, 2005) estimates that by 2020 25% of children will have a shorter life expectancy than their children. Jamie Oliver got a lot of attention for the disgraceful state of school dinners. A lot of attention has been given to junk food such as the film "Supersize me".

The Soil Association has widened the net further by testing children's menus at popular family restaurants and tourist destinations. It makes pretty grim reading. A few key points:
- not one chain passed the fat and sugar tests
- an average meal at Nando's had eight teaspoons of added sugar
- an average meal at TGI Friday's had double the school meal maximum saturated fat allowance
- half the restaurant chains failed to provide a minimum amount of fruit or vegetables
- 'as much as you like' ice cream and fizzy drink promotions are widespread
- the restaurant chains do not source local fresh food
- they simply reheat frozen ready meals
- hot dogs burgers and chips dominate the children's offering at tourist destinations.

It was not all bad. Center Parcs, the National Trust and the chain Leon were rated as providing affordable, healthy meals based on well sourced, fresh ingredients that were actually prepared on site. However most of the places assessed appear no more healthy than the classic junk food brands.